Is 'Heroes' back on track?

A funny thing happened on "Heroes' " road to ruin.

The show took a U-turn and actually got pretty good again.

Personally, I'd almost given up on the show. I had a couple of episodes recorded in my DVR that I couldn't even bring myself to watch. It was Deseret News movie critic Jeff Vice who said to me, "Is it my imagination, or was that last episode of 'Heroes' actually good?"

Not coincidentally, it was the March 23 hour ("Cold Snap") that marked the return of Bryan Fuller, who hadn't worked on the series since the first season. Fuller, who wrote the episode, returned to "Heroes" after he completed production on his canceled series "Pushing Daisies."

And the last half-dozen episodes of this season were the best since Season 1.

That includes tonight's season finale (8 p.m., Ch. 5), which is very good, although I do have one reservation.

One of "Heroes' " greatest flaws is that the show's writers just can't bring themselves to kill anyone off. Well, they kill plenty of characters, but most of them don't stay dead.

And we're not just talking about Claire (Hayden Panettiere) and Sylar (Zachary Quinto), who have super healing powers so they can recover from just about anything — up to and including death. But characters are brought back to life through all sorts of other manipulations.

Heck, when the show finally did kill off Niki, they brought the actress who played her (Ali Larter) back as Tracy, Niki's previously unknown sister. That is something you might expect out of "General Hospital," not a show like "Heroes" that's trying to be good science fiction.

The problem with dead characters not staying dead is that it destroys the drama and the tension. If death isn't final, it's not that big a deal.

And "Heroes" far too quickly crossed a line that left viewers expecting dead characters to resurrect. A line that gets crossed again tonight.

(If what follows here seems rather vague, well, I'm trying not to spoil the season finale by giving too much away.)

To all appearances, "Heroes" actually offs one of its main characters tonight. Unless there's more time travel at some point down the road, the characters appears to be dead, dead, dead.

There's even a truly gross scene in which we watch the character die, die, die.

What happens next is absolutely intriguing. And … I better stop right there.

It's a fine episode that gives "Heroes" six good hours in a row. That is darn good for a show that appeared incapable of giving us even one good episode, period.